Simon is four years old today!

My dearest Simon,

Happy Birthday, my sweet sunny boy. I can hardly believe you are four years old already! I completed the paperwork this week to enroll you in school this coming September, and could hardly believe that you are old enough — and yet, I know you’ve been ready for this for months.

You are, in my humble and unbiased opinion, plenty clever for a four year old. You can recognize your name and many of the letters of the alphabet, and you can count to 29. You have cute linguistic quirks that I secretly hope you never grow out of, including still saying “lellow” despite being clearly able to pronounce the letter Y in other contexts, and you tend to say, “What you said?” instead of a more polite “Pardon me?”, something I know I should correct but can’t bring myself to do.

At four, you know what you like: guacamole roll-ups; “pink meat” sandwiches with mustard on the side; chocolate milk; superheros; Star Wars; video games like Cars and Star Wars Complete Saga and the games on the Nick Jr website. You like salty better than sweet, and love to dip your food (and your fingers) in tzatziki, ketchup, mustard, or just about anything else. You like dogs, Curious George, Pixar movies, Tom and Jerry, Robert Munsch books and the stories about Matthew’s Midnight Adventures.

You are a lover, I can see that clearly. When your brother recently tried to get a rise out of you by taunting “Simon likes giiiiiirrrrlllsss!” in a sing-song voice, you simply agreed, saying, “Of course I like girls. I like all of them in the universe.” Your best friend at nursery school is Laila, sometimes called Lulu, but you seem to get along well with just about everyone. I can clearly see that your true best friend is your brother – when he is not your mortal enemy. I love the relationship the two of you share.

You have an uncanny memory, and have recently surprised me by reminding me of incidents that happened while you were sitting in your high chair — at least two or two and a half years ago. You consistently beat us at memory games, and love to play board games of any type. I also suspect you are musically inclined, and you love to paint pictures at your school and bring them home dedicated to the various members of your family.

You love your pyjamas, and would happily stay in them all day if we let you. For the most part, you’d prefer to stay inside than go out, and you are content to stay home with Daddy while your brother and I venture out for walks with the dog or on other adventures that include physical exertion.

You start almost every single day by crawling into bed with me, and despite my exhortations to be quiet, you define being quiet as singing to yourself, or reciting long passages from your favourite books and movies in a whisper that I can’t help but eavesdrop on. You love to give kisses. I honestly couldn’t count the number of kisses you have given me over the past few weeks as we wait together for your baby brother to arrive. You started life as a jealous and possessive little fellow, wanting to be held constantly and begrudging my attention to any other child, so I worried a little bit when I first became pregnant again how you might deal with the arrival of a new sibling. You have eased those fears down to nothing over the past nine months, and were even willing to share your birthday with your new baby brother if it came down to that. It now looks increasingly unlikely that you’ll have to do that, but I’m still thrilled with how genuinely excited you are about the pending arrival of your baby brother and your delight about being the older brother for a change.

I love you, Simon, more and more every day! Happy birthday, my sweet boy!

(the pictures in this post all came from my visit to Simon’s nursery school earlier this week)

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